Over 28 million people in the United States experience some degree of hearing loss. Approximately four million of those are profoundly deaf. Many of these deaf or hard of hearing individuals are confronted with barriers that impede their ability to effectively communicate with others. Such barriers include the inability to use spoken language, the inability of others to use and understand sign language, and the inability to understand the language being spoken to them.
Conversations with the deaf or hard of hearing are becoming increasingly limited due to the lack of communication skills of most individuals. Those individuals who do not have a broad range of communication skills are faced with a limited amount of resources available in order to effectively communicate with the deaf or hard of hearing. For example, the use of lip-reading, hand written notes, the use of gestures and other communication tools are commonly used. Lip reading is also commonly used. However, all of these techniques are limiting for the deaf or hard of hearing because intricate, involved conversations are not possible without the aid of a human interpreter, or the time-consuming and frustrating necessity of passing notes back and forth or other communication tools. Further, the use of a human interpreter is often difficult to arrange as well as expensive and lack of communication limits deaf or hard of hearing people in being able to be mobile in professional or social settings.
In addition, the use of mobile communication has grown dramatically in recent years. For deaf or hard of hearing individuals, verbal use of a mobile phone or communication device can be difficult, if not, impossible. Although emailing and text messaging are available, such formats are less desirable as a primary source of communication, since it does not match typical conversational exchange in a real time manner, since each party is required to wait the others response before continuing. Such a format can also be less desirable for hearing users when using text for communication purposes.